Ad of the Day: Puma

Droga5's 'After Hours Athlete' campaign returns to form with an attack on reality TV

Last year at Cannes, Droga5 took home the Film Craft Grand Prix for its Puma spot "After Hours Athlete," a beautifully crafted 90 seconds that shined a light on the bowlers, pool players, foosball fans, and other assorted "after-hours athletes" of the world. The sequel, "Pump Up," which replaced its predecessor's musical score with a round of "Everywhere We Go" as chanted by a cast of hipster-lite partiers, was less memorable, giving us a raucous montage of nightlife rather than an epic dusk-'til-dawn journey.

Luckily, Droga5 is back in good form with its latest for Puma, "Better Out Than In." This time, the spot has a message: Turn off the reality TV and go out into the night. Audio clips of cheesy dialogue (which might as well have been taken straight from the mouths of Kardashians or Bachelors or Survivors) repeat over and over as we watch late-night revelers scatter into the dark, where they might throw some darts, play bocce, sing karaoke, or dance feverishly. The slowly building score, gritty glow of the lights, and wistfully recorded personal moments restore that same bittersweet mood captured in the original spot.

Another version of that same ad, titled "Surfing," also posted below, adds an explanatory voiceover to the mix, but the film's message is already so clear—to quote Puma's own tagline, "Do you want to go out and live your life, or stay in and watch others live theirs?"—that literally spelling it out dilutes the impact. The contrast between meaningless TV chatter and the memories being created outside already provides a pretty good argument for letting your Real Housewives remain on the DVR.